Your Life is Too Small

A Message for Young Men

Why are you anxious? Can you name the cause? Do you think it’s the way you were raised?

Is it culture? Your schooling? The opposite sex? Or money? (There’s never enough.) 

Fair enough.

You probably lack perfect parents. And god knows our culture won’t help you much either. And your schooling was truly abysmal. And yes, money’s tight for a young man your age.

And let’s not get started with women for now. That’s a subject for deep introspection.

So yes, you have reasons – good reasons – for fear. But I’d like to suggest something else.

Something else – something deeper – hides behind fear.

But before I reveal it, know this:

Your anxiety is totally normal, my friend. It’s a feature, not a bug in your system.

And the cure is as simple and scary as hell. (Well, scary for some – and a challenge for all.)

The reason you’re anxious and can’t make it stop? Listen close.

Your life is too small.

Your life is too small for you now. You were made for achievement, to accomplish far more than you’ve got on your resume yet. More mountains to summit, more chasms to bridge. More oceans to cross. Yet you pace like a cat in a cage.

The tiger feels anxious when locked behind bars. Yet this is no circus. This is your life. And the clock ticks its passing each day.

Your anxiety is that of the apex predator.

It is perfectly normal for a man such as you to feel anxious when locked in a cage. Even a cage that is just in your mind. Especially a cage in your mind.

Like the tiger was made to stalk and to kill, you were made to compete and to win. You’re a man. You need danger, adventure and risk. You need conquest, else wither inside.

Imagine a man in a giant dark room.

So big echoes bounce off the walls. A single light shines on the floor from above. On the floor is a chair. In the chair is a man.

A young man.
Nervous, unsure of himself.
Look around. That young man is You.

You wait. You don’t venture out into the darkness. Your self-imposed cage is that circle of light in the midst of that giant black room.

That room is potential. And you are the man who was made to shine in it.

And yet you shrink back. You won’t make yourself go where your eyes cannot see.

Get out of your chair. Step into the dark. Push yourself to your limits of knowledge and skill and experience and comfort. Discover what’s waiting out there in the dark.

Will anxiety leave you at last? Of course not!

Anxiety.

He’s that friend who expects you to never give in. Who makes you go out when you’d rather stay home. Out in the desert where wild things prowl. Out to the dark unknown. Out where a dragon – your dragon – awaits you. Out to adventure. Destiny. Fate.

Far out of your circle of comforting light, and way past the limits you’ve set for yourself.

See, you are a man. You are proto-steel.

Yet steel to be wielded must be forged in the fire.

You were made for this moment.

You were made for this moment.

Don’t think that the sharp pain of fire means you’re failing. The heat of the fire means that you’re being forged, forged to win your inevitable battle.

You will have what you need at the moment you need it.

You will have what you need at the moment you need it.

So…
Get up.
Get out.
Get going.
Go get some.

Your life is too small for you now.